


mild high club

by Verbyna



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Epikegster, First Time, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 16:10:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17186186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: “We can do whatever you want,” Kent whispers. “We can, like, hang out.”





	mild high club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SummerFrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/gifts).



> the title is the name of an actual band that exists in the real world. amazing.
> 
> happy (belated) holidays, gabby! <3

Kent is glad that there’s a party going on, because everyone is busy downstairs, not up on the landing after he just ruined his own life.

 _You always say that,_ Jack spat at him. And he wasn’t wrong, was he? Kent always says it, always means it, and it always comes out wrong.

He has no idea what to do now, other than to keep playing hockey.

Before Jack, Rimouski had felt like a gamble. For a while Kent thought it was the right choice to leave Jersey, because he wasn’t alone - he had Jack, even if he missed his mom and he was never the best player on the team anymore. It stung, but at least if it was just Jack ahead of him, Kent could watch his back.

Now Kent knows he gambled and lost. He ended up so much further from home than he ever wanted to be, and he ended up alone. All the things Kent’s won since he was eighteen are just things Jack can throw in his face when Kent’s loneliness comes out so fucking _mean._

Kent’s impulsive and too soft inside to be anything but brittle - easy to break and sharp when he does. Kent _knows_ this about himself; he’s right there when he says shit he doesn’t mean to say, he can hear himself say it loud and clear. He can draw the line from his own poor impulse control to Jack wanting Kent out of his life.

He wishes he were kinder, or nicer, but it’s too late now. Jack won’t ever believe him again.

 

*

 

Luckily, it’s not Kent’s first time at the Haus, so he knows Knight has a bit of flat rooftop outside his window where people smoke up sometimes. Kent doesn’t want to smoke, he’s pretty paranoid about random drug tests with the way some of his teammates are handling being part of the little franchise that could, but sitting up there sounds like heaven compared to taking more selfies at the rager downstairs.

He doesn’t turn on the light when he opens the door to Knight’s room. There’s enough of a streetlamp glare from outside to find his way around the random crap on the floor, so Kent sidesteps laundry and books and a plaster bust of a random old dude in a glitter wig before he reaches the window.

Knight is Jack’s new best friend, Kent remembers suddenly. Kent likes the guy, but he goes back and kicks the bust down anyway, like that’ll make him feel better.

“Oh! Who’s there?” someone asks from the roof. “Are you okay?”

Kent doesn’t have it in him to be shocked tonight, so he calls back, “I’m fine.” He debates it for a second, but a handful of stoners is still better than a room full of drunk frat boys who watch his games.

“I’m coming out there,” he says, and climbs out.

He’s relieved to see that it’s only one guy. The cute blond one from earlier, the one who smelled really nice and obviously didn’t know who Kent was before Kent showed up at the party.

The guy lifts one corner of his mouth in a wry smile. He’s wrapped in a heavy-looking blanket; there are a couple of beer cans behind him and a misshapen ashtray by his feet where he’s curled up.

“Help yourself,” he offers. “I’ve had… a lot. I swear we’re not always like this.”

“Liar,” Kent says, still brittle and shaky and _stupid._ “Um.”

The kid just giggles. An honest-to-God giggle, so he probably wasn’t lying about drinking, at least.

“Well, Mister Parson, I ain’t gonna bes-uh. Besmirch!” he says triumphantly, then trails off.

“Besmirch…” Kent prompts.

“My teammates,” the kid says, a little less enthusiastic, and scoots over.

Kent raises his eyebrows at him, then reaches for a can and sits himself down. It suits Kent just fine to be quiet.

He thinks about how Jack told him to get out, how he flinched when Kent called him Zimms. How Kent flinched from _that,_ from the angry look on Jack’s face, even though Kent expected it, the way he always expects to feel ashamed when he reaches out to Jack these days.

Jack’s fine without him, but Kent doesn’t know how to do any of this - to be a soft landing for his rookies and talk to sick children in hospitals and act like he belongs in every room full of his childhood heroes that he’s welcomed into. He doesn’t know how to do it alone.

No one can tell. No one except Jack, and he’s repulsed by the way Kent needs him. _We were friends,_ Jack said once. Already in the past tense; the past already tense. _You were my best friend. But I’m not that guy. I’m not,_ he’d insisted, like Kent was about to interrupt.

“Selfish motherfucker,” Kent eventually spat out. He meant himself, too. It didn’t come out that way.

And that was the last time they talked before tonight. It’s a long shot, but Kent wonders if he’ll get over Jack if Jack genuinely hates him. 

The kid offers him another beer. Kent puts his empty can down and takes it with a nod.

They keep sitting there, together but not. Kent surfaces from his Worst Of mental hits parade once in a while to look at the kid - his blond hair, his soft-looking blanket, how small he made himself when he came out here all by himself. He’s pretty popular, Kent remembers from earlier. He’s pretty well-liked. But here he is, and if Kent could remember the kid’s name, he might ask him what’s wrong. He’d try to be kind, to remind himself that he _can_ be.

Instead, the kid digs into his blanket and pulls out a joint.

He doesn’t offer it to Kent, and Kent is grateful. He’d take it. He’d get a little crossfaded, like he and Jack used to at house parties, even if it’s without the pills they always took in Jack’s room before they went.

(Kent’s like a train. He didn’t come up with that; it was one of the scouts. He’d meant that Kent’s unstoppable, but Kent knows the truth in it: he always speeds down the same tracks.)

So he’s grateful the kid doesn’t offer, and they work on their separate buzzes. Kent only gets a little contact high, enough to loosen his back and blur out the worst of the guilt.

Maybe a quarter of an hour into it, the kid lifts a corner of the blanket. He doesn’t look at Kent, but there’s a certain camaradery to people who think their separate sad thoughts in the same place. It’s the basis of Kent and his dad’s relationship, so it feels natural, only slightly awkward, to scoot closer and lean against the same bit of wall that the kid’s propped up on, the blanket stretched across both their knees, tucked up to their chins against the loud, cold night.

They’re touching all along their sides now. Kent keeps his right hand steady on the beer can, but his left is a fist against his thigh.

“I saw you go into Jack’s room,” the kid says.

“Yeah,” Kent says.

“He made me cry once,” the kid says, and Kent glances sideways at him, startled. “More than once.”

He waits, and eventually the kid asks, “Is he worth the trouble?”

“Only if you’re selfish. Are you?”

Their warm hands are touching now. Their cold hands are fists against the blanket, but Kent focuses on where they’re comfortable. He knows how this goes; he grew up gay and a hockey player who was invited to townie parties, and suddenly he wants it so badly that he’s gagging for it.

It would wash the taste of Jack out of his mouth. It always did, before.

He’s still making up his mind about it when the kid grabs his hand under the blanket and squeezes.

 

*

 

The dude’s room is dark and warm and smells like caramel. They’re lying on their sides on the narrow bed, trading a bottle of water, tilting their faces up to the ceiling to drink. Kent wonders if he’ll be the guy’s first kiss.

The way the dude’s looking at him, he probably will be.

Kent is out of firsts. All his firsts are in this rundown house, maybe across the hall or downstairs in the middle of that crowd. Up here it’s like another world, something so new that Kent could walk in without dragging Jack across the threshold. _His_ Jack, anyway - college Jack’s handwriting is on the kid’s calendar, Kent recognized the roll of tape on the dresser as something they got at an event right before the draft. But that has nothing to do with Kent. Not really.

The only thing Kent’s thinking about is that Jack made this kid cry, and Kent can make up for it. He can be better at this one thing, if nothing else.

“We can do whatever you want,” Kent whispers. “We can, like, hang out.”

“Don’t let me lose my guts,” the kid whispers back, so fucking brave. Kent was never that brave, going after what he wanted. Just desperate and awkward, but he’s good at giving people what they want, if what they want is him.

Kent licks his lips in the dark and leans back against the pillows slowly, watching the way the kid starts to follow before he catches himself.

“What should I call you?”

“Eric,” the kid says. “Just. Eric’s fine,” and then he lifts a shaky hand across Kent’s torso and cups the back of his neck carefully.

Kent holds Eric’s wrist there while he twists around to put the water on the nightstand. He closes his eyes and exhales before he turns to face Eric again, and he holds Eric’s eyes when he leans in for a kiss.

Eric’s lips are soft and cool and taste like weed; his hand on Kent’s neck is comfortable. It’s so simple that it’s almost confusing. 

Kent lets go of Eric’s wrist and moves his hand down Eric’s thin cotton shirt to feel his ribs, the muscle in his core. If Jack made him cry already, it could only be in training, but it’s still a pleasant surprise to feel just how _much_ training there must’ve been. Eric’s playing with Kent’s hair now; he gives Kent a smug, slightly embarrassed grin when Kent’s eyebrows lift.

The things Kent wants to _do_ to him.

He might not even regret it in the morning. It’s refreshing.

 

*

 

An hour or so later, when they’re both cooling down and Eric’s trashcan is full of baby wipes, Eric pokes Kent in the ribs with his elbow.

“You hit like a kitten,” Kent says. “Stop it.”

Eric hits him a little harder, then pets his hair to make up for it. “So. Jack,” he says.

Kent blinks his eyes open. “What about him?”

“Whatever he says about you, I’m not gonna believe him.”

It startles a laugh out of Kent, even though it’s not funny. It’s so much sweeter than what Kent deserves.

“He’ll be right about most of it. He’s stubborn as shit, and he’s not perfect, but he won’t be wrong about me. I’m probably worse.”

But he lets Eric’s disbelief convince him otherwise. Just for a little while.

Until morning, and the rest of his life.


End file.
